Classroom Corrections - Christianity Today

Tramps. Prostitutes. Junkies. Recidivists. Delinquents. Body bags. Dark secrets of professedly decent families. Inmates’ flatulence jokes. When you work in law enforcement, you see people at their worst. The lore wears on you.

Cops and corrections officers know where the wrong path goes. The dismal realities they witness make them “unrecognized ethnographers of our time,” in the words of Connie Fletcher, author of What Cops Know. They read people well. Crisis intervention skills and the ability to anticipate problems are keys to their success. Their knowledge of the consequences that lawbreakers suffer could save many from big mistakes.

But by the time society’s guardians meet with those who most need to learn from them, it is too late: the robbery has already been committed, someone has landed behind bars, someone’s spouse has suffered a black eye, somebody lies murdered.

Trigger Unhappy

The inability to prevent the making of a criminal irked Dean Dyer, whose job at the Michigan Department of Corrections entailed parole work and weapons training. Dyer could draw from a concealed holster and fire two rounds into the center of a silhouette target in less than one second. He wrote several interactive life-sized video programs that train officers to shoot under threat of attack.

His job helped him appreciate the “many ways in which law enforcement officers daily risk their lives,” and he admires those who pursue jobs in corrections and police work. Yet, much of what he could not repair while in law enforcement made him rethink his career choice.

When he worked with a parolee, Dyer wished he “could have gotten ahold of this person five or ten years ago to help him make some better decisions. God can work at any time, obviously, but I think it’s easier to influence someone at an earlier age.”

God gave him this desire, Dyer says, through an illness. His job required lifting a lot of ammunition and target-holders, as well as driving long distances. He was driving 400 to 500 miles a week when his body gave in to Crohn’s disease, which forced him to take time off and depend on Social Security benefits. This gave him time to reflect on the possibilities that a teaching job would open before him—and on his growing discomfort with the potential misuses of weapons. When he recovered, he never returned to his old job.

He believes God directed him to enroll in a post-baccalaureate education program at Spring Arbor University, a Free Methodist school in south-central Michigan whose flexibility attracts many nontraditional students. That was two years ago. Today Dyer guides ninth- and tenth-graders through prepositional phrases—and through their impressionable years.

The Social Work

While prison work did not help Dyer get hired as a teacher, his experience comes in handy in the classroom. Most kids admire his firmness and beg him to tell prison stories. Few people are better equipped than Dyer to steer these kids away from the heavy hand of the criminal justice system. He warns them that “prison is a lousy place, it smells bad, and you don’t get to do the things you want.” Since his parole work took him to many rough homes, he can empathize with many of his difficult students. That, in turn, helps develop a trust. Some kids ask about his faith, and he gladly answers.

Besides Dyer, others have left law enforcement to become teachers through the Spring Arbor program. Diane Crosley, a veteran pedagogue who teaches educational methods courses in the evening (and drew CT‘s attention to this story), says that in each of her classes “at least two or three are either former corrections officers, parole officers, juvenile probation officers, city police, or deputy sheriffs.”

Debra Johnson, a Spring Arbor assistant professor of social work, used to be a police officer. “Police spend a lot of time at the shooting range, they spend a lot of time on self-defense—and then rarely need these skills,” she says. “When you fire a weapon, it has to be accurate, but most police officers go through their career without ever shooting someone.” What occupies most of their time? Public relations, communications, domestic disturbances. In other words, Johnson says, social work.

Johnson was once called to the scene of a drowning of a 3-year-old, the only child of a woman in her 40s who had miscarried several times. Johnson’s faith and compassion prompted her to attend the funeral. “The social work part of me needed to follow up on that,” she says.

Getting to Them Early

David Swanwick, whose parents are teachers, decided to follow their example. While he will miss the support of other corrections officers he could count on when he dealt with a defiant inmate, he will not miss seeing the same convicts repeatedly.

“In three and a half years, the recidivists would know me by name: ‘Corporal Dave, it’s me again!'” He wished they “could have just felt an inkling of other things in life. That’s why I’m going into teaching.”

Having put an end to jail fights many times, Swanwick finds it easy to maintain control in the classroom when he is a substitute teacher. The best compliment he has received is inadvertent—students adopt a note of ostentatious disappointment in saying his name when they find out he will be their substitute teacher. He says their tone implies that they know he’ll make them work hard. For Swanwick, that’s educational success.

Another Spring Arbor student, Mike Lauer, was a patrol officer in Jackson, Michigan, when he permanently injured his knee while pursuing a suspect. He says police work and teaching are as different as night and day.

“Ten years of law enforcement have taught me one thing: Most of the time, we were too late,” he says. “We’d chase 16-year-old kids selling crack in Jackson, arrest them in the middle of the night, and couldn’t find their parents, so we’d have to arrange for them to go to a foster home. The next day, the kids would run away. We’d get them again, the circle would repeat itself. I felt like we were just putting out fires.”

Lauer was an on a first-name basis with all felons in his district. One of them barricaded himself in a garage. “He screams, ‘I’m not coming out!’ So then I tell him it’s me, and he says, ‘Oh, Lauer? I’ll be out as soon as I finish this beer!’

“Few repeat offenders I met through police work were going to change because of what I did,” Lauer says. “Some of them changed, but only because they wanted to.”

While he thinks police serve society well by cracking down on drug dealers or negotiating with people who barricade themselves in garages, he’s looking forward to the opportunity to shape young lives. Instead of putting out fires, he’ll be busy educating kids about the responsible use of matches.

The key is to get to them early—before they become tramps, prostitutes, junkies, recidivists, or delinquents.

Agnieszka Tennant is an associate editor of Christianity Today.